Background Information for the poetry of Xin Qiji

Provided by Starla Wallick

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Xin Qiji lived from 1140 to 1207 AD during the Song Dynasty, which existed between 960 and 1279 AD. The dynasty is historically split into two periods, the Northern and the Southern, because the Emperor and his court were forced to flee south after various northern kingdoms moved southward and conquered the northern part of China. Xin Qiji fought against these northern invaders in his twenties after his hometown had been conquered. He later became a civil servant with the Song government and fought corruption in the dynasty and urged for military action against the northern invaders. However, appeasing the northern invaders was favored and he was forced into retirement. It was not until after he retired that he began to write poems, many of which expressed his dismay at the current state of affairs or reminisced over the glories of his youth. He wrote in a form of poetry known in Chinese as ci (lyric), for which the Song Dynasty is well known. The ci differed from the famous form poetry (shi) of the Tang Dynasty as the poems were originally written to be sung to pieces of music, which have since been lost. The poem’s meter, tonal pattern, and rhyme varied with each piece of music. Later the form for each poem became divorced from its music and the poems were written for the form only and not to be accompanied by the music. The two poems translated here were written to the form of the song “Partridge Sky.”

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Programs in Creative Writing and Translation ■ Department of English ■ University of Arkansas ■ Fayetteville